Irish start-up creates cloud-based software for call centres

Dick Bourke and Derek Corcoran, directors, Sentient, which has pioneered a new cloud solution called Scorebuddy for the contact centre industry

Sentient, a start-up based at the Guinness Enterprise Centre, has come up with a new cloud solution called Scorebuddy that’s targeting the call centre space so that team leaders can track and review customer calls, emails, social media interactions and text chats without having to use spreadsheets.

Two years in development, Scorebuddy has been designed specifically for call centres as a new hosted software that wipes out the need for supervisors and team leaders at contact centres to collate and track data via spreadsheets on documents when tracking customer experiences and scoring interactions.

The company behind Scorebuddy is Sentient, which has been around since 2001 and is an Enterprise Ireland high-potential start-up. Sentient employs 10 people from its base at the Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin City.

The company was set up by Derek Corcoran, while Dick Bourke is a fellow director.

According to Bourke, Scorebuddy was deigned in collaboration with large call centre operators in order to figure out what their needs were when producing reports based on monitoring how agents interact with customers.

He said the aim of the cloud solution is to track multi-media activities that are becoming a core part of contact centre interactions such as email, chat and social media communications.

Sentient operates Scorebuddy via the Amazon cloud infrastructure, but the company also offers it via its own ‘private cloud’ at its data centre in Clonshaugh in north Co Dublin.

Here in Ireland, the web-based service is already being used by Fexco, Big Fish Games and SouthWestern. Ultimately, however, Bourke said the thrust is to gain traction in the UK market.

“In Ireland, the contact centre space employs between 20,000 and 30,000 people, while in the UK the sector employs over 1m people," he said.

Via Scorebuddy, he said that companies can set up their scorecards, access and share the information, monitor performance and scale the system.

The reporting tool has also been designed to share information with agents and team leaders, so they can consolidate quality date with other key performance indicators.

For instance, Bourke said that companies can also use it to assess and audit back office activities such as complaints’ handling and direct debits.

He said the feedback from supervisors and agents has been positive so far, as it’s helping them to streamline processes and cut down on management time when producing agent reviews.